A blog about Cyber Security & Compliance

Tag

Data breach

According to BDO’s analysis of risk factors listed in the most recent 10-K filings of the 100 largest U.S. retailers, risk associated with a possible security breach was cited unanimously by retailers, claiming the top spot, up from the 18th spot in 2007.

Since major retail security breaches began making national headlines in 2013, retailers have become acutely aware of the growing cyber threat and cyber-related risks. Between new point-of-sale systems and evolving digital channels, the industry faces unique vulnerabilities: Retailers are responsible for safeguarding consumer data as well as their own, in addition to protecting against potential gaps in security related to third-party suppliers and vendors.

2016 marks the 10th anniversary of our retail risk factor analysis, and throughout the decade, we’ve seen the retail landscape undergo a dramatic evolution in response to the recession, new and maturing e-commerce channels and evolving consumer preferences,” said Doug Hart,partner in BDO’s Consumer Business practice. “Retailers over the years have proven to be in tune with the industry-wide issues and trends that could pose risks to their businesses, and they are clearly not tone deaf when it comes to reacting to the urgency of cybersecurity

The following chart ranks the top 25 risk factors cited by the 100 largest U.S. retailers:

Top 20 Risks for Retailers

2016

2015

2014

General Economic Conditions

#1

100%

#1

100%

#1

100%

Privacy Concerns Related to Security Breach

#1t

100%

#4t

99%

#8

91%

Competition and Consolidation in Retail Sector

#3

98%

#1t

100%

#3

98%

Federal, State and/or Local Regulations

#4

96%

#1t

100%

#2

99%

Natural Disasters, Terrorism and Geo-Political Events

#5

94%

#7

96%

#13

87%

Implementation and Maintenance of IT Systems

#6

93%

#4

99%

#7

92%

U.S. and Foreign Supplier/Vendor Concerns

#6t

93%

#6

98%

#4

96%

Legal Proceedings

#6t

93%

#9t

95%

#8t

91%

Labor (health coverage, union concerns, staffing)

#9

91%

#7t

96%

#5

94%

Impediments to Further U.S. Expansion and Growth

#10

90%

#12t

92%

#17

78%

Dependency on Consumer Trends

#11

88%

#9

95%

#6

93%

Consumer Confidence and Spending

#12

87%

#15

89%

#8t

91%

Credit Markets/Availability of Financing and Company Indebtedness

#13

85%

#11

94%

#11

89%

Failure to Properly Execute Business Strategy

#14

82%

#12

92%

#11t

89%

Changes to Accounting Standards and Regulations

#15

76%

#14

90%

#13t

87%

International Operations

#16

73%

#17

86%

#15

80%

Loss of Key Management/New Management

#16t

73%

#19

80%

#16

79%

Marketing, Advertising, Promotions and Public Relations

#18

66%

#25

68%

#24

64%

Consumer Credit and/or Debt Levels

#19

62%

#27

65%

#23

65%

Joint Ventures

#20

61%

#21

76%

#18

74%

Additional findings from the 2016 BDO Retail Risk Factor Report:

Cyber Risks Include Compliance Measures

As the cyber threat looms larger, retailers are bracing for new and emerging cybersecurity and data privacy legislation. Risks associated with cyber and privacy regulations were cited by 76 percent of retailers this year. This is in line with the findings from the 2016 BDO Retail Compass Survey of CFOs, in which nearly 7 in 10 retail CFOs said they expected cyber regulation to grow in 2016. These concerns have been highlighted by President Obama’s recently unveiled Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and continued debate in Congress over information sharing between the government and private industry.

Retailers have not escaped regulatory scrutiny. The industry is also subject to Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) standards that bolster credit card authentication and authorization. Industry analysts estimate that just 40 percent of retailers are compliant with EMV standards despite the Oct. 1, 2015 deadline.

“Mandating EMV chip-compliant payment systems is an important first step in shoring up the industry’s cyber defenses, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Shahryar Shaghaghi, National Leader of the Technology Advisory Services practice group and Head of International BDO Cybersecurity. “Online and mobile transactions remain vulnerable to credit card fraud and identity theft, and POS systems can still be hacked and provide an access point to retailers’ networks. New forms of malware can also compromise retailers’ IT infrastructure and disrupt business operations. Every retailer will experience a data breach at some juncture; the real question is what mechanisms have been put in place to mitigate the impact.”

E-Commerce Ubiquity Drives Brick & Mortar Concerns

Impediments to e-commerce initiatives also increased in ranking, noted by 57 percent of retailers in 2016, a significant contrast from 12 percent in 2007. In 2015, e-commerce accounted for 7.3 percent of total retail sales and is continuing to gain market share.

As e-commerce grows and businesses strive to meet consumers’ demand for seamless online and mobile experiences, retailers are feeling the effects in their physical locations. The recent wave of Chapter 11 bankruptcies and mass store closings among high-visibility retailers has raised concerns across the industry. Ninety percent of retailers are worried about impediments to growth and U.S. expansion this year. Meanwhile, risks associated with owning and leasing real estate jumped 14 percentage points to 54 percent this year.

Heightened worries over the impact of e-commerce on physical locations are far reaching, driving concerns over market competition for prime real estate and mall traffic to rise 19 percentage points to 46 percent. Meanwhile, consumer demand for fast shipping fueled an uptick in risks around the increased cost of mail, paper and printing, rising 10 percentage points from seven percent in 2015 to 17 percent this year.

General Economic Conditions Hold Weight

General economic risks have been consistently top of mind for retailers throughout all ten years of this survey. Even at its lowest percentage in 2008, this risk was still the second most cited, noted by 83 percent of companies.

Despite the fact that since 2013, general economic conditions have remained tied for the top risk, concerns about specific market indicators have receded.

For more information on the 2016 BDO Retail RiskFactor Report, view the full report here.

About the Consumer Business Practice at BDO USA, LLP

BDO has been a valued business advisor to consumer business companies for over 100 years. The firm works with a wide variety of retail and consumer business clients, ranging from multinational Fortune 500 corporations to more entrepreneurial businesses, on myriad accounting, tax and other financial issues.

Like this:

For any organization connected to the internet, it is not a question of if but when their business will be under attack, according to a recent cybersecurity report from Symantec, which found Canada ranked No. 4 worldwide in terms of ransomware and social media attacks last year. These increasing attacks put customer information, and especially payment data at risk for compromise.

When breaches do occur, response time continues to be a challenge. In more than one quarter of all breaches investigated worldwide in 2014 by Verizon, it took victim organization weeks, or even months, to contain the breaches. It is against this backdrop that global cybersecurity, payment technology and data forensics experts are gathering in Vancouver for the annual PCI North America Community Meeting to address the ongoing challenge of protecting consumer payment information from criminals, and new best practices on how organizations can best prepare for responding to a data breach.

A data breach now costs organizations an average total of $3.8 million. However, research shows that having an incident response team in place can create significant savings. Developed in collaboration with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Forensic Investigators (PFI) community, Responding to a Data Breach: A How-to Guide for Incident Management provides merchants and service providers with key recommendations for being prepared to react quickly if a breach is suspected, and specifically what to do contain damage, and facilitate an effective investigation.

The silver lining to high profile breaches that have occurred is that there is a new sense of urgency that is translating into security vigilance from the top down, forcing businesses to prioritize and make data security business-as-usual,” said PCI SSC General Manager Stephen W. Orfei. “Prevention, detection and response are always going to be the three legs of data protection. Better detection will certainly improve response time and the ability to mitigate attacks, but managing the impact and damage of compromise comes down to preparation, having a plan in place and the right investments in technology, training and partnerships to support it

This guidance is especially important given that in over 95% of breaches it is an external party that informs the compromised organization of the breach,” added PCI SSC International Director Jeremy King. “Knowing what to do, who to contact and how to manage the early stages of the breach is critical

At its annual North America Community Meeting in Vancouver this week, the PCI Security Standards Council will discuss these best practices in the context of today’s threat and breach landscape, along with other standards and resources the industry is developing to help businesses protect their customer payment data. Keynote speaker cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs will provide insights into the latest attacks and breaches, while PCI Forensic Investigators and authors of the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report and PCI Compliance Report, will present key findings from their work with breached entities globally. Canadian organizations including City of Calgary, Interac and Rogers will share regional perspectives on implementing payment security technologies and best practices.

Download a copy of Responding to a Data Breach: A How-to Guide for Incident Management here.

Like this:

This analysis is by Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Charles Graham and Edmond Christou. It originally appeared on the Bloomberg Professional Service.

Personal data theft, cyber-attacks whet appetite for insurers

The value of personal data stored on corporate databases is rapidly increasing. For EU citizens it is set to reach 1 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) by 2020, according to Boston Consulting Group. This is raising the need for greater protection. The increased incidence of data breaches and misuses as hackers become more sophisticated has also imposed greater regulatory requirements on businesses. Companies are seeking new products from insurers to limit the cost of interruption, reputational damage and penalties.

Companies Impacted: While cyber risk potentially affects many classes of business, there are a number of providers including AIG, Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re and Zurich Insurance Group, as well as specialist insurers like Beazley and Hiscox, which have developed specific cyber products.

Photographer: Craig Warga/Bloomberg

Insurers view industry as ill-prepared for risk of cyber theft

Cyber theft is top of the list of risks for which businesses are least prepared, according to Allianz’s 2015 Risk Barometer Survey. Companies need to understand the potential effect of a cyber-attack on their supply chain, the liability they could face if they can’t deliver products on time and the legal penalties if they lose customer data. While computer systems can be improved, it is impossible to make them entirely secure. This is creating opportunities for insurers.

The average cost of a data breach has increased to $3.79 million, according to a study by the Ponemon Institute based on a survey of 350 companies in 11 countries. This cost has increased by 23% since 2013. The average cost for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive information rose to $154 this year from $145 in 2014. Concerns about data breaches and privacy have led to legal reforms in the U.S. and Europe, which may help drive demand for cyber-insurance.

Companies Impacted: Increasing cyber-attacks have driven insurers such as AIG, Allianz, Beazley, Hiscox and Zurich Insurance, to expand their product offerings to include first- and third-party coverage for cyber-risk.

Retailers face biggest threat from cyber theft, data breaches

Retailers face the biggest threat from data breaches, according to figures compiled by Zurich Insurance. The food and beverage industry is second in line for hackers followed by hospitality, finance and professional services. Carphone Warehouse discovered on Aug. 5 that personal data of 2.4 million of its customers and encrypted credit card details for 90,000 clients may have been accessed in a data breach. Insurers are tailoring products to meet different industries cyber risks.

Companies Impacted: Insurers work with companies to identify best practices in data privacy and security to help to minimize the financial cost should a breach occur. AIG, Allianz, Beazley, Hiscox, Zurich Insurance are among the companies to have developed cyber-insurance coverage.

Die hard 4.0 cyber scenario could cost more than $1 trillion

A cyber-attack on the U.S. power grid could cost $243 billion rising to more than $1 trillion in the most extreme scenario, according to a study by Lloyd’s of London and the University of Cambridge. The report examines the insurance implications of a major cyber-attack. It depicts a scenario where hackers shut parts of the grid, plunging 15 U.S. states and Washington DC into darkness, leaving 93 million people without power. Insurers are just starting to wake up to the scale of potential losses.

Munich Re has partnered with Hewlett-Packard and Swiss Re with IBM to develop solutions that offer clients cyber protection and provide support in the event of a security breach. IBM will assess clients’ external and internal vulnerability to cyber-attacks and offer options for mitigating these risks. IBM’s security platform provides intelligence to help organizations protect their clients’ data, applications and infrastructure.

Peer Comparison: Swiss Re’s Corporate Solutions business is one of a number of insurers offering cyber coverage. Other companies include AIG, Allianz and Zurich Insurance.

Like this:

Vectra Networks announced the results of the second edition of its “Post-Intrusion Report”, a real-world study about threats that evade perimeter defenses and what attackers do once they get inside your network.

Report data was collected over six-months from 40 customer and prospect networks with more than 250,000 hosts, and is compared to results in last year’s report. The new report includes detections of all phases of a cyber attack and exposes trends in malware behavior, attacker communication techniques, internal reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data exfiltration.

According to the report, there was non-linear growth in lateral movement (580%) and reconnaissance (270%) detections that outpaced the 97% increase in overall detections compared to last year. These behaviors are significant as they show signs of targeted attacks that have penetrated the security perimeter.

While command-and-control communication showed the least amount of growth (6%), high-risk Tor and external remote access detections grew significantly. In the new report, Tor detections jumped by more than 1,000% compared to last year and accounted for 14% of all command-and-control traffic, while external remote access shot up by 183% over last year.

The report is the first to study hidden tunnels without decrypting SSL traffic by applying data science to network traffic.

A comparison of hidden tunnels in encrypted traffic vs. clear traffic shows that HTTPS is favored over HTTP for hidden tunnels, indicating an attacker’s preference for encryption to hide their communications.

The increase in lateral movement and reconnaissance detections shows that attempts at pulling off targeted attacks continue to be on the rise,” said Oliver Tavakoli, Vectra Networks CTO. “The attackers’ batting average hasn’t changed much, but more at-bats invariably has translated into more hits

Within the category of lateral movement detections, brute-force attacks accounted for 56%, automated replication accounted for 22% and Kerberos-based attacks accounted for 16%. Although only the third most frequent detection, Kerberos-based attacks grew non-linearly by 400% compared to last year.

Lateral-movement detections, which track the internal spread of malware and authentication-based attacks such as the use of stolen passwords, led the pack with over 34% of total detections.

Command and control detections, which identify a wide range of malicious communication techniques, were close behind with 32% of detections.

Botnet monetization detections track the various ways criminals make money from ad click-fraud, spamming behavior, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. These botnet-related behaviors accounted for 18% of all detections.

The reconnaissance category looks for internal reconnaissance performed by an attacker already inside the network and represented 13% of detections.

Exfiltration detections look for the actual theft of data. The good news here is that it was by far the least common category of detection at 3%.

The data in the Post-Intrusion Report is based on metadata from Vectra customers and prospects who opted to share detection metrics from their production networks. Vectra identifies active threats by monitoring network traffic on the wire in these environments. Internal host-to-host traffic and traffic to and from the Internet are monitored to ensure visibility and context of all phases of an attack.

Like this:

There are significant gaps in cybersecurity knowledge, shared visibility and mutual trust between those who serve on organizations’ board of directors and IT security professionals. These gaps between those responsible for corporate and cyber governance and those responsible for the day-to-day defense against threats could have damaging impacts on organizations’ cybersecurity posture, leaving them more vulnerable to attack and breaches.

This data comes from a new survey, Defining the Gap: The Cybersecurity Governance Survey, conducted by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by Fidelis Cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity is a critical issue for boards, but many members lack the necessary knowledge to properly address the challenges and are even unaware when breaches occur. Further widening the gap, IT security professionals lack confidence in the board’s understanding of the cyber risks their organizations face, leading to a breakdown of trust and communication between the two groups.

The survey asked more than 650 board members and IT security professionals (mainly CIOs, CTOs and CISOs) for their perspectives regarding board member knowledge and involvement in cybersecurity governance.

Key findings include:

Lack of Critical Cybersecurity Knowledge at the Top

76% of boards review or approve security strategy and incident response plans, but 41% of board members admitted they lacked expertise in cybersecurity. An additional 26% said they had minimal or no knowledge of cybersecurity, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to understand whether the practices being discussed adequately address the unique risks faced by their organization. This renders their review of strategy and plans largely ineffective.

Limited Visibility into Breach Activity

59% of board members believe their organizations’ cybersecurity governance practices are very effective, while only 18% of IT security professionals believe the same. This large gap is likely the result of the board’s lack of information about threat activity. Although cybersecurity governance is on 65% of boards’ agendas, most members are remarkably unaware if their organizations had been breached in the recent past. Specifically, 54% of IT security professionals reported a breach involving the theft of high-value information such as intellectual property within the last two years, but only 23% of board members reported the same, with 18% unsure if their organizations were breached at all.

As the breadth and severity of breaches continues to escalate, cybersecurity has increasingly become a board level issue,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. “The data shows that board members are very aware of cybersecurity, but there is still a lot of uncertainty and confusion. Many lack knowledge not only about security issues and risks, but even about what has transpired within their own companies, which is shocking to me. Without an understanding of the issues, it’s impossible to reasonably evaluate if strategies and response plans are effectively addressing the problem

Absence of Trust Between Boards and IT Security Professionals

The board’s lack of knowledge has created a further divide. Nearly 60% of IT security professionals believe that the board does not understand the cybersecurity risks of the organization, compared to 70% of board members who believe that they do understand the risks.

The gap in knowledge and limited visibility into breach activity means board members don’t have the information they need to make smart cybersecurity governance decisions, and IT security professionals don’t have the support, monetary or otherwise, to maintain a strong security posture,” said retired Brig. Gen. Jim Jaeger, chief cyber services strategist at Fidelis. “Board members don’t need to be cyber experts, but they should have a thorough knowledge of the risks their organization faces and be able to provide the support needed for the security teams to protect against those risks

Additional Key Findings Include:

Target breach was a watershed moment. 65% of board members and 67% of IT security professionals reported that the Target data breach had a significant impact on the board’s involvement in cybersecurity governance, while previous high profile breaches were reported to have nominal or no impact.

The SEC will drive drastically increased board involvement. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) Guidelines requiring the disclosure of material security information had a significant impact in boards’ involvement, according to 46% of board members and 44% of IT security professionals. However, only 5% of board members and 2% of IT security professionals say they followed the SEC guidelines and disclosed a material security breach to shareholders. Moving forward, 72% of board members believe the SEC will make the guidelines a mandate, and 81% believe that this will increase the board’s involvement in cybersecurity governance.

Like this:

Tripwire have announced the results of a study on the cyber literacy challenges faced by organisations.

The study evaluated the attitudes of executives as they relate to cybersecurity risk decision-making and communication between IT security professionals, executive teams and boards. Study respondents included 101 C-level executives and directors as well as 176 IT professionals from both private and public U.K. organisations.

Despite the increasing number of successful cyberattacks against U.K. organisations, the study revealed that 54% of C-level executives at organisations within the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 index believe their board is both cybersecurity literate and actively engaged in routine security. IT professionals from the same organisations are less confident in their boards cybersecurity knowledge, with 26% stating their boards only steps in when there is a serious incident.

While the results of the study point to executive confidence, they reveal the uncertainty of IT professionals. When asked if their board was “cyber literate,”29% of IT professionals either answered “no” or “not sure.” However, when C-level executives were asked the same question, 84% answered “yes.”.

There’s a big difference between cybersecurity awareness and cybersecurity literacy,” said Dwayne Melancon, chief technology officer for Tripwire. “If the vast majority of executives and boards were really literate about cybersecurity risks, then spear phishing wouldn’t work. I think these results are indicative of the growing awareness that the risks connected with cybersecurity are business critical, but it would appear the executives either don’t understand how much they have to learn about cybersecurity, or they don’t want to admit that they that they don’t fully understand the business impact of these risks

Other key findings include:

28% of IT professionals “don’t have visibility” into what the board is told about cybersecurity

47% were “not concerned” about their boards knowledge of cybersecurity.

In the event of a cyberattack, respondents would be most concerned about 62% customer data, 50% damage to brand and reputation and 40% financial damage or stock price.

35% of respondents agreed that a security breach at their own organization had the biggest impact on their boards’ cybersecurity awareness, while other respondents felt that Heartbleed (19%) had a bigger impact than the Target or Sony breach and the Snowden leaks (17% and 8%, respectively).

Most organisations are not struggling with communication tools said Melancon. They are instead struggling with finding the right vocabulary and information to accurately portray cybersecurity risk to their boards, and they are trying to find the right balance of responsibility and oversight for this critical business risk

Like this:

2014 was another busy year for the Information Commissioners Office with yet more breaches of the Data Protection Act.

There are normally three types of punishments administered by the ICO

Monetary. The most serious of the actions and one normally reserved for organisational entities.

Undertaking. Typically applied when an organisation has failed to adhere to good business practise and needs the helping guidance of the ICO

Prosecutions. Normally reserved for individuals who have blatantly breached the Act.

Enforcements. A requirement on an organisation or individual to desist from specific activities.

Below is a summary of the ICO’s activity in 2014 across all three “punishment” areas.

Monetary penalty notices

A monetary penalty will only be served in the most serious situations. When deciding the size of a monetary penalty, the ICO takes into account the seriousness of the breach and other factors like the size, financial and other resources of an organisation’s data controller. The ICO can impose a penalty of up to £500,000. It is worth noting that monetary penalties are to HM Treasury.

22 August 2014 a monetary penalty of £90,000 was issued to Kwik Fix Plumbers Ltd for continually making nuisance calls targeting vulnerable victims. In several cases, the calls resulted in elderly people being tricked into paying for boiler insurance they didn’t need.

5 December 2014 a monetary penalty of £70,000 was issued to Manchester Ltd after sending unsolicited text messages and appeared on the recipients’ mobile phone to have been sent by “Mum”.

05 November 2014 a monetary penalty of £7,500 was issued to Worldview Limited following a serious data breach where a vulnerability on the company’s site allowed attackers to access the full payment card details of 3,814 customers

01 October 2014 a monetary penalty of £70,000 was issued to fine to EMC Advisory Services Limited for making hundreds of nuisance calls. The company was responsible for 630 complaints to the ICO and the TPS between 1 March 2013 and 28 February 2014. They failed to make sure that those registered with the TPS, or who’d previously asked not to be contacted, weren’t being called.

26 August 2014 a monetary penalty of £180,000 to the Ministry of Justice over serious failings in the way prisons in England and Wales have been handling people’s information

28 July 2014 a monetary penalty of £50,000 fine to Reactiv Media Limited after an investigation discovered they had made unsolicited calls to hundreds of people who had registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

23 July 2014 a monetary penalty of £150,000 to Think W3 Limited after a serious breach of the Data Protection Act revealed thousands of people’s details to a malicious hacker.

03 April 2014 a monetary penalty of £50,000 Amber UPVC Fabrications Ltd (T/A Amber Windows) after an investigation discovered they had made unsolicited marketing calls to people who had registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

19 March 2014 a monetary penalty of £100,000 to Kent Police after highly sensitive and confidential information, including copies of police interview tapes, were left in a basement at the former site of a police station.

07 March 2014 a monetary penalty of £200,000 to the British Pregnancy Advice Service. Hacker threatened to publish thousands of names of people who sought advice on abortion, pregnancy and contraception.

11 January 2014 a monetary penalty of £185,000 to Department of Justice Northern Ireland after a filing cabinet containing details of a terrorist incident was sold at auction.

Undertakings are formal agreements between an organisation and the ICO to undertake certain actions to avoid future breaches of the Data Protection Act, typically this involves, Encryption, Training and Management Procedures.

19 December 2014 Treasury Solicitors Department. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that the Treasury Solicitors Department has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed February 2014.

19 December 2014 Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed April 2014.

19 December 2014 Caerphilly County Borough Council. A council that ordered covert surveillance on a sick employee must review its approach after an Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigation. The ICO found the Council breached the Data Protection Act when it ordered the surveillance of an employee suspected of fraudulently claiming to be sick.

15 December 2014 St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed June 2014.

01 December 2014 Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed April 2014.

28 November 2014 Oxfordshire County Council. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Oxfordshire County Council as appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed June 2014.

28 November 2014 Aspers (Milton Keynes) Limited. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Aspers (Milton Keynes) Limited has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed June 2014.

26 November 2014 Department of Justice Northern Ireland. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that the Department of Justice Northern Ireland has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed May 2014.

17 November 2014 London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that London borough of Barking and Dagenham has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed April 2014.

05 November 2014 Student Loans Company. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Student Loans Company has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed April 2014.

05 November 2014 Royal Veterinary College. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that The Royal Veterinary College has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed October 2013.

24 October 2014 Gwynedd Council. An Undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Gwynedd Council following two breaches of the Data Protection Act.

24 October 2014 Disclosure and Barring Service. An undertaking to comply with the first data protection principle has been signed by the Disclosure and Barring Service.

08 October 2014 South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust. An undertaking to comply with the first, third and seventh data protection principles has been signed by South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust. This includes the completion of a Privacy Impact Assessment in respect of data sharing. This follows an investigation whereby patient data related to 45, 431 data subjects was shared with a Clinical Commissioning Group (‘CCG’) without a legal basis to do so. There were also security concerns surrounding the manner in which the data was stored on discs when being distributed to the CCG.

08 October 2014 Weathersby Limited. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Weathersby Limited after the company failed to secure an internal server properly, resulting in personal data relating to clients being made available on the internet.

07 October 2014 Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This follows an investigation into two reported incidents involving disclosures of personal data to third parties in error.

25 September 2014 Norfolk Community Health & Care NHS Trust. An undertaking to comply with the first, third and seventh data protection principle has been signed by Norfolk Community Health & Care NHS Trust. This follows an investigation involving the inadvertent sharing of data with a referral management centre.

22 September 2014 Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. This follows an investigation into two separate incidents involving disclosures of personal data.

09 September 2014 Isle of Scilly Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Council of the Isle of Scilly. This follows an investigation into two separate incidents. The first relating to confidential information which was part of a disciplinary hearing being sent unredacted to third parties.

28 August 2014 Racing Post. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Racing Post. This follows an investigation whereby the Racing Post website was subject to an internet based SQL injection attack which gave access to a customer database. The data included customer registration details relating to 677,335 data subjects.

13 August 2014 Wokingham Borough Council. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Wokingham Borough Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed April 2014.

11 August 2014 Thamesview Estate Agents Ltd. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Thamesview Estate Agents Ltd after the company continued to leave papers containing personal information on the street despite a previous warning. The papers were stored in transparent bags and the information was clearly visible to anyone who walked past.

18 July 2014 The Moray Council. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that The Moray Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed May 2014.

09 July 2014 Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board after sensitive information was sent to the wrong address.

27 June 2014 Oxfordshire County Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Oxfordshire County Council. This follows an investigation whereby a solicitor had removed a number of documents from the office but had dropped these in a street near their home. The sensitive personal data related to three child protection cases concerning 22 data subjects.

23 June 2014 Aspers (Milton Keynes) Limited. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Aspers (Milton Keynes) Limited, following an email which was sent in error to an recipient outside of the organisation.

19 June 2014 Department of Justice Northern Ireland. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Department of Justice Northern Ireland. This follows the sale of a filing cabinet that contained documents originating from within the Northern Ireland Prison service. The documents contained personal data, as defined by section 1 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act), which was sensitive in nature.

17 June 2014 Aberdeenshire Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Aberdeenshire Council after a paper file was lost by an employee of the Adult Mental Health section of the council’s Social Work service. The employee had placed the file on the roof of his car before driving off.

16 June 2014 Cardiff and Vale University Health Board. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed October 2013.

09 June 2014 Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust. This follows an investigation whereby the local press were handed a patient handover sheet containing details of 18 patients.

02 June 2014 Jephson Homes Housing Association Ltd. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Jephson Homes Housing Association Ltd. This follows an investigation into the disclosure in error of several documents containing third party personal data when providing documents to an individual as part of a litigation process.

30 May 2014 Panasonic UK. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Panasonic UK has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed October 2013.

30 May 2014 St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council after child’s foster placement address was disclosed in error. Investigations identified that Council had selected the correct recipient and had redacted the majority of documents disclosed however the address was missed on one document.

30 May 2014 London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. An undertaking to respond in a quicker and more effective manner to losses of personal data has been signed by London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. This follows an investigation into the loss of a file containing medical data relating to eleven children, which discovered that although the council knew where the file was, it had still not been retrieved five months later.

27 May 2014 Student Loans Company. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Student Loans Company Limited following an investigation by the ICO into three separate incidents involving the disclosure of documents to the incorrect recipients. The investigation identified that whilst checking procedures were in place documents containing sensitive personal data were subject to fewer checks than those containing less sensitive data.

16 May 2014 Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed November 2013.

12 May 2014 The Moray Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by The Moray Council. This follows an investigation into the loss of a file containing adoption meeting papers at a café in the local area.

25 April 2014 Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. This follows an investigation whereby a social worker had left a case file containing sensitive personal data at a client’s home. The case file outlined child welfare concerns and disclosed the identity of the source.

15 April 2014 Wirral Borough Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Wirral Borough Council after social services records containing sensitive personal information were sent to the wrong addresses on two occasions. The information, which was disclosed in February and April 2013, included sensitive personal details relating to two families living in the borough and in one case included details of a criminal offence committed by one of the family members.

15 April 2014 Wokingham Borough Council. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Wokingham Borough Council, after sensitive social services records relating to the care of a young child were lost. The information, which had been requested by a family member, was lost after the delivery driver left the documents outside the requester’s home in August 2013.

11 April 2014 Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed September 2013.

28 March 2014 Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. This follows an investigation by the ICO into a series of fax related incidents which revealed that the Trust had a very low attendance rate for Information Governance training.

20 March 2014 Disclosure and Barring Service. An undertaking to comply with the first data protection principle has been signed by the Disclosure and Barring Service.

14 March 2014 Cardiff City Council. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Cardiff City Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed August 2013.

13 March 2014 Neath Care. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Neath Care. This follows the disclosure of ten client care service delivery plans which were found by a member of the public in the street. The care service delivery plans related to elderly people and contained confidential client information on matters such as personal care, medication and key safe numbers.

26 February 2014 Treasury Solicitor’s Department. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Treasury Solicitor’s Department. The data controller agreed to put measures in place to ensure the security of the personal data it handles.

24 January 2014 Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed September 2013.

10 January 2014 Northern Health and Social Care Trust. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Northern Health and

Prosecution

13 November 2014 Harkanwarjit Dhanju. A former pharmacist working for West Sussex Primary Care Trust has been prosecuted for unlawfully accessing the medical records of family members, work colleagues and local health professionals. Harkanwarjit Dhanju was fined £1000, ordered to pay a £100 victim surcharge and £608.30 prosecution costs.

11 November 2014 Matthew Devlin. Company director Matthew Devlin has been fined after illegally accessing one of Everything Everywhere’s (EE) customer databases. Devlin used details of when customers were due a mobile phone upgrade to target them with services offered by his own telecoms companies.

22 August 2014 Dalvinder Singh. A Birmingham banker has been fined after he admitted reading his colleagues bank accounts. He worked in Santander UK’s suspicious activity reporting unit at their Leicester office. His role investigating allegations of money laundering meant he was able to view customer accounts. But he used his access to look at eleven colleagues’ accounts, to learn how much their salaries and bonuses were.

06 August 2014 A Plus Recruitment Limited. A recruitment company has been prosecuted today at Doncaster Magistrates Court for failing to notify with the ICO. A Plus Recruitment Limited pleaded guilty and was fined £300 and ordered to pay costs of £489.95 and a victim surcharge of £30.

05 August 2014 1st Choice Properties (SRAL). A property lettings and management company has been prosecuted for failing to notify with the ICO at Uxbridge Magistrates Court today. 1st Choice Properties (SRAL) was convicted in the defendant’s absence and fined £500, ordered to pay costs of £815.08 and a victim surcharge of £50.

15 July 2014 Jayesh Shah. The owner of a marketing company trading as Vintels has been prosecuted for failing to notify the ICO of changes to his notification at Willesden Magistrates Court today. Jayesh Shah was fined £4000, ordered to pay costs of £2703 and a £400 victim surcharge.

14 July 2014 Hayden Nash Consultants. A recruitment company has been prosecuted for failing to notify with the ICO at Reading Magistrates Court today. Hayden Nash Consultants entered a guilty plea and was fined £200, ordered to pay costs of £489.85 and a £20 victim surcharge.

10 July 2014 Stephen Siddell. A former branch manager for Enterprise Rent-A-Car has been prosecuted for unlawfully stealing the records of almost two thousand customers before selling them to a claims management company. Stephen Siddell was fined £500, ordered to pay a £50 victim surcharge and £264.08 in prosecution costs.

09 July 2014 Global Immigration Consultants Limited. A legal advice company has been prosecuted for failing to notify with the ICO at Manchester Magistrates Court today. Global Immigration Consultants Limited entered a guilty plea and was fined £300, ordered to pay costs of £260.18 and a £30 victim surcharge.

06 June 2014 Darren Anthony Bott. The director of a pensions review company has been prosecuted for failing to notify with the ICO. Darren Anthony Bott of Allied Union Ltd entered a guilty plea and was fined £400, ordered to pay costs of £218.82 and a £40 victim surcharge.

05 June 2014 API Telecom. A telecoms company has been prosecuted by the ICO for failing to comply with an information notice in Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday. The company, API Telecom, entered a guilty plea and was fined £200, ordered to pay full costs of £489.85 and the victim surcharge was imposed.

13 May 2014 QR Lettings. A property company has been prosecuted by the ICO for failing to notify under section 17 of the Data Protection Act. QR Lettings pleaded guilty at a hearing on 13 May 2014 at Birkenhead Magistrates Court. The company was fined £250, ordered to pay costs of £260 and a £30 victim surcharge.

25 April 2014 Barry Spencer. A man who ran a company that tricked organisations into revealing personal details about customers has been ordered to pay a total of £20,000 in fines and prosecution costs, as well as a confiscation order of over £69,000 at a hearing at Isleworth Crown Court.

25 April 2014 Allied Union Limited. A pension review company has been prosecuted by the ICO for failing to notify under section 17 of the Data Protection Act. Allied Union Limited pleaded guilty at a hearing on 25 April 2014 at Swansea Magistrates Court. The company was fined £400, ordered to pay costs of £338.11 and a victim surcharge of £40.

25 March 2014 Help Direct UK Limited. A financial advisors has been prosecuted by the ICO for failing to notify under section 17 of the Data Protection Act. Help Direct UK Limited pleaded guilty at a hearing on 25 March 2014 at Swansea Magistrates Court. The company was fined £250, ordered to pay costs of £248.83 and a victim surcharge of £25.

12 March 2014 Boilershield Limited. A plumbing company and its director have been prosecuted by the ICO for failing to notify under section 17 of the Data Protection Act. Boilershield Limited and its director, Mohammod Ali, pleaded guilty at a hearing on 12 March 2014 at Bromley Magistrates. They were both fined £1,200, ordered to pay costs of £196.87 and a victim surcharge of £120.

11 March 2014 Becoming Green (UK) Ltd. A Cardiff-based green energy deal company, Becoming Green (UK) Ltd, has been prosecuted by the Information Commissioner’s Office after failing to notify the ICO that it handled customers’ personal data. The offence was uncovered when the company was being monitored following concerns about compliance.

24 January 2014 ICU Investigations Limited. Six men who were part of a company that tricked organisations into revealing personal

12 November 2014 Hot House Roof Company. The ICO has issued an enforcement notice against Hot House Roof Company ordering them to stop making nuisance marketing calls. The company had failed to honour suppression requests and repeatedly made calls to a number of individuals despite their being TPS registered.

21 October 2014 Abdul Tayub. The Information Commissioner’s Office has served Abdul Tayub with an enforcement notice after he was found to be sending unsolicited marketing mail by electronic means without providing information as to his identity and without prior consent.

12 September 2014 All Claims Marketing Limited. The Information Commissioner’s Office has served All Claims Marketing Limited with an enforcement notice after the company was found to be sending unsolicited marketing mail by electronic means without providing information as to its identity.

03 September 2014 Winchester and Deakin Limited. The Information Commissioner’s Office has served Carmarthen-based direct marketing company Winchester and Deakin Limited (also trading as Rapid Legal and Scarlet Reclaim) with an enforcement notice ordering them to stop making nuisance calls. The move comes after an investigation discovered they had made unsolicited marketing calls to people who had registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or who had asked not to be contacted.

16 June 2014 DC Marketing Limited. The ICO has issued an enforcement notice against DC Marketing Limited after the company made hundreds of nuisance calls to try and get people to purchase solar panels partly financed by the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund. An ICO investigation found the company also frequently gave a false name to avoid detection.

29 May 2014 Wolverhampton City Council. The ICO has issued an enforcement notice against Wolverhampton City Council, following an investigation into a data breach at the council that occurred in January 2012. The breach was caused when a social worker, who had not received data protection training, sent out a report to a former service user detailing their time in care. However, the social worker failed to remove highly sensitive information about the recipient’s sister that should not have been included.

03 April 2014 Amber UPVC Fabrications Ltd (T/A Amber Windows). The ICO has issued an enforcement notice against Amber Windows ordering them not to call subscribers who have previously told them not to ring or subscribers who have not consented to them calling and have registered the number with the TPS for at least the required 28 days.

10 March 2014 Isisbyte Limited. The ICO has served an enforcement notice on Isisbyte Limited after the company was found to be making unsolicited marketing calls without providing information as to their identity.

10 March 2014 SLM Connect Limited. The ICO has served an enforcement notice on SLM Connect Limited after the company was found to be making unsolicited marketing calls without providing information as to their identity.

Who has breached the Data Protection Act in 2012? Find the complete list here.

Who breached the Data Protection Act in 2013? Find the complete list here.

Sally-Anne Poole, Group Manager at the Information Commissioner’s Office said:

The breach has highlighted two hugely important areas of data protection: the unnecessary storage of older personal data and the lack of security to protect data.

“All data is vulnerable even when in the process of being deleted, and Office should have had stringent measures in place regardless of the server or system used. The need and purpose for retaining personal data should also be assessed regularly, to ensure the information is not being kept for longer than required.”

“Fortunately, in this case there is no evidence to suggest that the information has been used any further and the company did not store any bank details.”

The data breach also highlights the risks associated with customers using the same password for all their online accounts.

Sally-Anne Poole added:

“This one incident could potentially have given the hacker access to numerous accounts that the clients held with other organisations, as passwords were included on the database in question. It’s important to use a unique, strong password for each separate account; preferably a combination of numbers and letters – not a name or dictionary word.”

Office has agreed to an “undertaking under the Data Protection Act 1998”, the details are here.

Like this:

A summary of the “Data Breach: The Cloud Multiplier Effect”survey from Ponemon sponsored by Netskope is below.

The survey reveals how the risk of a data breach in the cloud is multiplying. This can be attributed to the proliferation of mobile and other devices with access to cloud resources and more dependency on cloud services without the support of a strengthened cloud security posture and visibility of end user practices.

Ponemon surveyed 613 IT and IT security practitioners in the United States who are familiar with their company’s usage of cloud services.

51% say on-premise IT is equally or less secure than cloud-based services

66% of respondents say their organization’s use of cloud resources diminishes its ability to protect confidential or sensitive information

64% believe it makes it difficult to secure business-critical applications

A lack of knowledge about the number of computing devices connected to the network and enterprise systems, software applications in the cloud and business critical applications used in the cloud workplace could be creating a cloud multiplier effect. Other uncertainties identified in this research include how much sensitive or confidential information is stored in the cloud.

For the first time, Ponemon attempt to quantify the potential scope of a data breach based on typical use of cloud services in the workplace or what can be described as the cloud multiplier effect. The report describes nine scenarios involving the loss or theft of more than 100,000 customer records and a material breach involving the loss or theft of high value1 IP or business confidential information.

When asked to rate their organizations’ effectiveness in securing data and applications used in the cloud.

51% of respondents say it is low

26% rate the effectiveness as high. Based on their lack of confidence

51% say the likelihood of a data breach increases due to the cloud

Key takeaways from this research include the following:

Cloud security is an oxymoron for many companies.

62% of respondents do not agree or are unsure that cloud services are thoroughly vetted before deployment

69% believe there is a failure to be proactive in assessing information that is too sensitive to be stored in the cloud

Certain activities increase the cost of a breach when customer data is lost or stolen.

An increase in the backup and storage of sensitive and/or confidential customer information in the cloud can cause the most costly breaches. The second most costly occurs when one of the organization’s primary cloud services provider expands operations too quickly and experiences financial difficulties. The least costly is when the use of IaaS or cloud infrastructure services increases.

Certain activities increase the cost of a breach when high value IP and business confidential information is lost or stolen

Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) results in the most costly data breaches involving high value IP. The second most costly is the backup and storage of sensitive or confidential information in the cloud increases. The least costly occurs when one of the organization’s primary cloud providers fails an audit failure that concerns the its inability to securely manage identity and authentication processes.

Why is the likelihood of a data breach in the cloud increasing?

Ideally, the right security procedures and technologies need to be in place to ensure sensitive and confidential information is protected when using cloud resources. The majority of companies are circumventing important practices such as vetting the security practices of cloud service providers and conducting audits and assessment of the information stored in the cloud.

The findings also reveal that 55% do not believe that the IT security leader is responsible for ensuring the organization’s safe use of cloud computing resources. In other words, respondents believe their organizations are relying on functions outside security to protect data in the cloud.

62% of respondents do not agree or are unsure that cloud services are thoroughly vetted for security before deployment

63% believe there is a lack of vigilance in conducting audits or assessments of cloud-based services

69% of respondents believe there is a failure to be proactive in assessing information that is too sensitive to be stored in the cloud

There is a lack of confidence in the security practices of cloud providers

Respondents are critical of their cloud providers’ security practices. First, they do not believe they would be notified that the cloud provider lost their data in a timely manner. Second, they do not think the cloud provider has the necessary security technologies in place.

72% of respondents do not agree their cloud service provider would notify them immediately if they had a data breach involving the loss or theft of their intellectual property or business confidential information

71% of respondents fear their cloud service provider would not notify their organization immediately if they had a data breach involving the loss or theft of customer data.

69% of respondents do not agree that their organization’s cloud service use enabling security technologies to protect and secure sensitive and confidential information

64% say these cloud service providers are not in full compliance with privacy and data protection regulations and laws

Lack of visibility of what’s in the cloud puts confidential and sensitive information at risk

The number of computing devices in the typical workplace is making it more difficult than ever to determine the extent of cloud use. According to estimates provided by respondents, an average of 25,180 computing devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones are connected to their organization’s networks and/or enterprise systems.

Ponemon asked respondents to estimate the percentage of their organizations’ applications and information that is stored in the cloud. They were also asked to estimate the percentage of these applications and information that are not known, officially recognized or approved by the IT function (a.k.a. shadow IT).

30% of business information is stored in the cloud but of this, respondents estimate 35% is not visible to IT. This suggests that many organizations are at risk because they do not know what sensitive or confidential information such as IP is in the cloud.

What employees do in the cloud?

44% of employees in organizations use cloud-based services or apps in the workplace

53% use their personally owned mobile devices (BYOD) in the workplace

50% of these employees use their own devices to connect to cloud-based services or apps.

Do certain changes in an organization’s use of cloud services affect the likelihood of a data breach?

17% say the use of cloud-based services significantly increases

34% say it increases the likelihood of a data breach. Ponemon define a material data breach as one that involves the loss or theft of more than 100,000 customer records or one that involves the theft of high value IP or business confidential information.

Calculating the economic impact of a data breach in the cloud.

Ponemon calculate what it might cost an organization to deal with a data breach in the cloud involving customer records. These calculations are based on Ponemon Institute’s recent cost of data breach research and the estimated likelihood or probability of a data breach based on cloud use. The calculation involves the following four steps:

Second, based on a data breach size of 100,000 or more compromised records in the survey and using the unit cost of $201.18 times 100,000 records. Ponemon calculate a total cost of $20,118,000

Third, from the survey results Ponemon extrapolate the average likelihood of a data breach involving 100,000 or more questions at approximately 11.8% over a two-year period.

Fourth, multiplying the estimated likelihood or probability of a data breach at 11.8% times the total cost of $20,118,000 Ponemon calculate a baseline expected value of $2.37 million as the average of what an organization would have to spend if it had a data breach involving customer records lost or stolen in the cloud.

Ponemon calculate what it might cost an organization to deal with a data breach in the cloud involving high value IP. Once again, these calculations are based on Ponemon Institute’s recent cost of data breach research and the estimated likelihood or probability of a data breach based on cloud use. The calculation involves the following steps:

Second, based upon the estimates provided by respondents Ponemon extrapolate the likelihood of a data breach involving the theft of high value information at 25.4%.

Third, multiplying the estimated likelihood or probability of a data breach at 25.4% times the total cost of $11.788 million Ponemon calculate a baseline expected value of $2.99 million as the average economic impact for organizations in our study.

What can cost an organization the most when it has a data breach involving the loss or theft of IP? The most costly scenarios involve the growth in the number of employees using their own cloud apps in the workplace for sharing sensitive or confidential information (a.k.a. BYOC) and an increase in the backup and storage of IP or business confidential information in the cloud.

The average costs to deal with these two types of data breaches are $5.38 million and $4.93 million, respectively.

Like this:

The spate of recent data breaches at big-name companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Home Depot, and Target raises questions about the effectiveness of the private sector’s information security.

According to FBI Director James Comey

There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who’ve been hacked…and those who don’t know they’ve been hacked

A recent survey by the Ponemon Institute showed the average cost of cyber crime for U.S. retail stores more than doubled from 2013 to an annual average of $8.6 million per company in 2014. The annual average cost per company of successful cyber attacks increased to $20.8 million in financial services, $14.5 million in the technology sector, and $12.7 million in communications industries.

This paper lists known cyber attacks on private U.S. companies since the beginning of 2014. (A companion paper discussed cyber breaches in the federal government.) By its very nature, a list of this sort is incomplete. The scope of many attacks is not fully known. For example, in July, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued an advisory that more than 1,000 U.S. businesses have been affected by the Backoff malware, which targets point-of-sale (POS) systems used by most retail industries. These attacks targeted administrative and customer data and, in some cases, financial data.

This list includes only cyber attacks that have been made known to the public. Most companies encounter multiple cyber attacks every day, many unknown to the public and many unknown to the companies themselves.

The data breaches below are listed chronologically by month of public notice.

January

Target (retail). In January, Target announced an additional 70 million individuals’ contact information was taken during the December 2013 breach, in which 40 million customer’s credit and debit card information was stolen.

Neiman Marcus (retail). Between July and October 2013, the credit card information of 350,000 individuals was stolen, and more than 9,000 of the credit cards have been used fraudulently since the attack. Sophisticated code written by the hackers allowed them to move through company computers, undetected by company employees for months.

Michaels (retail). Between May 2013 and January 2014, the payment cards of 2.6 million Michaels customers were affected. Attackers targeted the Michaels POS system to gain access to their systems.

Yahoo! Mail (communications). The e-mail service for 273 million users was reportedly hacked in January, although the specific number of accounts affected was not released.

April

Aaron Brothers (retail). The credit and debit card information for roughly 400,000 customers of Aaron Brothers, a subsidiary of Michaels, was compromised by the same POS system malware.

AT&T (communications). For two weeks AT&T was hacked from the inside by personnel who accessed user information, including social security information.

May

eBay (retail). Cyber attacks in late February and early March led to the compromise of eBay employee log-ins, allowing access to the contact and log-in information for 233 million eBay customers. eBay issued a statement asking all users to change their passwords.

Five Chinese hackers indicted. Five Chinese nationals were indicted for computer hacking and economic espionage of U.S. companies between 2006 and 2014. The targeted companies included Westinghouse Electric (energy and utilities), U.S. subsidiaries of SolarWorld AG (industrial), United States Steel (industrial), Allegheny Technologies (technology), United Steel Workers Union (services), and Alcoa (industrial).

Unnamed public works (energy and utilities). According to the Department of Homeland Security, an unnamed public utility’s control systems were accessed by hackers through a brute-force attack on employee’s log-in passwords.

June

Evernote (technology). In the same week as the Feedly cyber attack, Evernote and its 100 million users faced a similar denial-of-service attack.

P.F. Chang’s China Bistro (restaurant). Between September 2013 and June 2014, credit and debit card information from 33 P.F. Chang’s restaurants was compromised and reportedly sold online.

August

U.S. Investigations Services (services). U.S. Investigations Services, a subcontractor for federal employee background checks, suffered a data breach in August, which led to the theft of employee personnel information. Although no specific origin of attack was reported, the company believes the attack was state-sponsored.

Community Health Services (health care). At Community Health Service (CHS), the personal data for 4.5 million patients were compromised between April and June. CHS warns that any patient who visited any of its 206 hospital locations over the past five years may have had his or her data compromised. The sophisticated malware used in the attack reportedly originated in China. The FBI warns that other health care firms may also have been attacked.

UPS (services). Between January and August, customer information from more than 60 UPS stores was compromised, including financial data, reportedly as a result of the Backoff malware attacks.

Defense Industries (defense). Su Bin, a 49-year-old Chinese national, was indicted for hacking defense companies such as Boeing. Between 2009 and 2013, Bin reportedly worked with two other hackers in an attempt to steal manufacturing plans for defense programs, such as the F-35 and F-22 fighter jets.

September

Home Depot (retail). Cyber criminals reportedly used malware to compromise the credit card information for roughly 56 million shoppers in Home Depot’s 2,000 U.S. and Canadian outlets.

Google (communications). Reportedly, 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords were compromised. About 100,000 were released on a Russian forum site.

Apple iCloud (technology). Hackers reportedly used passwords hacked with brute-force tactics and third-party applications to access Apple user’s online data storage, leading to the subsequent posting of celebrities’ private photos online. It is uncertain whether users or Apple were at fault for the attack.

Goodwill Industries International (retail). Between February 2013 and August 2014, information for roughly 868,000 credit and debit cards was reportedly stolen from 330 Goodwill stores. Malware infected the chain store through infected third-party vendors.

SuperValu (retail). SuperValu was attacked between June and July, and suffered another malware attack between late August and September. The first theft included customer and payment card information from some of its Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Shop ‘n Save, and Shoppers stores. The second attack reportedly involved only payment card data.

Bartell Hotels (hotel). The information for up to 55,000 customers was reportedly stolen between February and May.

U.S. Transportation Command contractors (transportation). A Senate report revealed that networks of the U.S. Transportation Command’s contractors were successfully breached 50 times between June 2012 and May 2013. At least 20 of the breaches were attributed to attacks originating from China.

October

J.P. Morgan Chase (financial). An attack in June was not noticed until August. The contact information for 76 million households and 7 million small businesses was compromised. The hackers may have originated in Russia and may have ties to the Russian government.

Dairy Queen International (restaurant). Credit and debit card information from 395 Dairy Queen and Orange Julius stores was compromised by the Backoff malware.

Snapsave (communications). Reportedly, the photos of 200,000 users were hacked from Snapsave, a third-party app for saving photos from Snapchat, an instant photo-sharing app.

Securing Information

As cyber attacks on retail, technology, and industrial companies increase so does the importance of cybersecurity. From brute-force attacks on networks to malware compromising credit card information to disgruntled employees sabotaging their companies’ networks from the inside, companies and their customers need to secure their data. To improve the private sector’s ability to defend itself, Congress should:

Create a safe legal environment for sharing information. As the leaders of technological growth, private companies are in most ways at the forefront of cyber security. Much like government agencies, companies must share information that concerns cyber threats and attack among themselves and with appropriate private-public organizations. Congress needs to create a safe environment in which companies can voluntarily share information without fear of legal or regulatory backlash.

Work with international partners. As with the Backoff malware attacks, attacks can affect hundreds if not thousands of individual networks. These infected networks can then infect companies outside the U.S. and vice versa. U.S. and foreign companies and governments need to work together to increase overall cybersecurity and to enable action against individual cyber criminals and known state-sponsored cyber aggressors.

Encourage cyber insurance. Successful cyber attacks are inevitable because no security is perfect. With the number of breaches growing daily, a cybersecurity insurance market is developing to mitigate the cost of breaches. Congress and the Administration should encourage the proper allocation of liability and the establishment of a cyber insurance system to mitigate faulty cyber practices and human error.

Conclusion

The recent increases in the rate and the severity of cyber attacks on U.S. companies indicate a clear threat to businesses and customers. As businesses come to terms with the increasing threat of hackers, instituting the right policies is critical to harnessing the power of the private sector. In a cyber environment with ever-changing risks and threats, the government needs to do more to support the private sector in establishing sound cybersecurity while not creating regulations that hinder businesses more than help them.

— Riley Walters is a Research Assistant in the Asian Studies Center, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation.

Like this:

I recently read a posting “Where’s the Compliance Experience on Corporate Boards?” [i] which showed some disturbing results describing the backgrounds of the Fortune 500 Board Members in terms of Compliance. Here are the results:

Background

No. of Board Members

No. of Companies

Finance

1,583

473

Legal

391

225

Accounting

201

165

Compliance

9

9

Add to this, in the recent speech given by Security and Exchange Commissioner Luis Aguilar at the New York Stock Exchange Conference “Cyber Risks and the Boardroom”,[ii] he emphasized the importance of cybersecurity and how fast the need for cybersecurity has grown in such a short time period, pointing out that U.S. companies experienced a 42% increase between 2011 and 2012 in the number of successful cyber-attacks they incurred per week. He cautioned,

Boards that choose to ignore, or minimize, the importance of cybersecurity oversight responsibility, do so at their own peril

Companies must have someone on the board that is able to adequately understand and implement cybersecurity procedures. Many boards lack the necessary technical expertise to be able to evaluate whether management is taking appropriate steps to address cybersecurity issues. This responsibility often falls to the audit committee, but they may not have the expertise or skills to add cyber-risk oversight to their long list of duties. Commissioner Aguilar recommends that boards create a separate enterprise risk committee that can provide improved risk reporting and monitoring, as well as push necessary resources and overall support to company executives responsible for risk management

Navy Admiral Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command stated

Military commanders must ‘own’ cyber. Networks and cyber [should be] the commanders’ business.” Commanders operate under the “flawed” notion that they can turn over network responsibilities to the unit’s information technology experts, said Rogers. “Commanders have to own this mission and integrate it into operations.” Senior officers ought to be as knowledgeable about a unit’s network capabilities and potential vulnerabilities as they would be about its fuel and ammunition supplies, he added. “The challenge to that is as much cultural as it is technical [iii]

There is a definite pattern here. It is clear from the survey results and statements presented above that the proper disciplines and backgrounds are not present on the Boards nor the military leadership. This lack of knowledge and background represents a risk for these companies and investors that should not exist and can be addressed. Additionally, these organizations have an obligation to protect the information gathered from their customers, partners and those individuals who interact with them.

If someone on the Board was knowledgeable and asked questions of the senior executives on cybersecurity and compliance then the senior management would be sure to have someone in their group who was capable of seriously addressing these issues. This would cascade down the organization and the employees would be more focused on security and, more importantly, feel free to raise their perceived security issues up the management chain and receive appreciation for their input, and more importantly, the organization would obtain more effective cyber controls and compliance controls.

This is not just an IT problem and executives cannot just assume that this will be handled by the IT people because it usually involves budget, procedural changes that affect other departments, etc. If the executives do not listen and understand what the IT Security and Compliance people are asking for, they will not fund the requested programs and projects until there is a data breach and then they will finally provide whatever funding is requested. This is not the way to operate. Organizations and people will be hurt.

Barry Schrager

Barry Schrager is credited as one of the people who started the concept of data security when he founded and was the first Manager of the SHARE Security Project in 1972. The project delivered a series of requirements to IBM in 1974 including data protection by default and algorithmic grouping of users and resources. When IBM delivered its security product, RACF, in 1976, it did not meet the requirements and IBM told him they were not achievable. So, Barry developed his own security product, ACF2, which met the requirements and was used by customers such as General Motors, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Britain’s MI-5, the Federal Reserve System and the Executive Office of the President of the United States. When Barry sold the company, SKK, Inc., it had a 60 percent market share against IBM’s RACF and CA’s Top Secret. Under Barry’s leadership, SKK developed the first VM operating system security product, ACF2-VM, and the first automated Operating System auditing product, Examine-MVS, now known as CA-Auditor.

In addition to that, Barry has a variety of experiences in mainframe software development, including the Neon Systems Shadow (now Rocket Software’s Shadow z/Direct), the EKC E-SRF Access Analysis product, JME Software’s Deadbolt product, the Vanguard Integrity Professionals line of RACF security products and Xbridge Systems’ DataSniff product. Additionally, Barry has done security reviews at institutions such as the FDIC and Morgan Stanley.

Like this:

The U.S. Secret Service has issued an advisory to the hospitality industry to be on alert for keyloggers on the computers in the business center. Whether your hotel received this advice or not, this is something that will undoubtedly affect your business in the near future. We’ve put together this brief guide on reacting to the advisory.

What happened?

According to the advisory issued by the Department of Homeland Security/Secret Services, (which can be found on osac.gov) Task force agents arrested a group of suspects that had installed keylogger software on computers in various hotel business centers.

The suspects were able to obtain large amounts of information including other guests’ personally identifiable information (PII), log in credentials to banks, retirement, and personal webmail accounts, as well as other sensitive data flowing through the business center’s computers

Software keyloggers are installed directly onto the machine, records keystrokes, and then transmits them to the attacker

Hardware keylogger maybe a small device that sits as a connector between the keyboard and the computer, or a USB flash drive that is plugged into the computer. These are less common because of the difficulty involved in reaching the physical machine

How to check if a business center has been compromised

Physically inspect your keyboards and computers and their connections to ensure no unknown devices are present

Investigate active processes on the machine to determine if they are making malicious outbound communications that would be sending out the data collected by the keylogger

Perform a hash analysis of all files on the drive to see if they match any known malicious hash values

What to do if you have a compromised business center?

Remove or disconnect the computer from the network but leave the computer on and running

Engage a security consultant to determine the scope of the potential compromise to determine the best approach to remediate

What should you tell your compromised customers?

In accordance with state and industry breach rules, inform them of the facts

Let them know the steps you’ve taken to ensure it won’t happen again

How can you protect your business center?

Application and process whitelisting

Disable unused USB ports

Configure firewalls to block outbound connections to known malicious sites

Overall, the impact of this issue can be devastating to a business. Performing some or all of the proactive actions listed here can be critical to identifying these issues in your environment. In a perfect world, these proactive checks will find no evidence of intrusion or compromise. In that case, your business would be able to prove ‘due diligence’ in the face of this advisory, and could quell any customer concerns before they arose.

Written by Dan Fritsche, Practice Director, Coalfire Labs. The original post is here.

Like this:

According to IDG research in a CSG Invotas white paper “Security Automation: Time to Take a Fresh Look” most organisations struggle to resolve the effects of a breach.

There’s no doubt that improving intrusion response and resolution times reduces the window of exposure from a breach,” said Jen McKean, research director at IDG Research. “More companies seek security automation tools that will enable them to resolve breaches in mere seconds and help maintain business-as-usual during the remediation period

Researchers polled decision makers of information security, strategy, and solution implementations at companies with 500 or more employees. They explored the security challenges commercial organizations face when confronted with security breaches across their networks. Key findings include:

46% of respondents report an average detection time of hours or days

54% reporting average resolution times of days or months

On going management of electronic identities that control access to enterprise, cloud, and mobile resources take the most time to change or update during a security event

A majority of respondents seek ways to reduce response time in order to address risk mitigation, preserve their company’s reputation, and protect customer data

61% of respondents admit they are looking for ways to improve response times to security events

82% of respondents report no decrease in the number of network security events or breaches last year whilst more than a quarter of those surveyed report an increase

60% of IT Security Resources dedicated to protecting the network layer

10% of respondents reporting they’re able to resolve issues in seconds or minutes; 54% say it takes days, weeks or months

28% of respondents say the number of security events or breaches increased in 2013

24% report that the severity of incidents increased

39% of respondents say they can detect a security breach within seconds or minute

Business process automation solutions offer a new approach to the most difficult step in security operations: taking immediate and coordinated action to stop security attacks from proliferating. Building digital workflows that can be synchronized across an enterprise allows a rapid counter-response to cyber-attacks. Speed, accuracy, and efficiency are accomplished by applying carrier-grade technology, replicating repetitive actions with automated workflows, and reducing the need for multiple screens.

It is no longer a surprise to hear that a breach has compromised data related to customers, employees, or partners,” said Paul Nguyen, president of global security solutions at CSG Invotas. “CIOs recognize that they need faster, smarter ways to identify security breaches across their enterprises. More importantly, they need faster, smarter ways to respond with decisive and coordinated action to help protect threats against company reputation, customer confidence, and revenue growth

A quarter of respondents say they are comfortable with the idea of automating some security workflows and processes and that they deploy automation tools where they can. 57% of respondents say they are somewhat comfortable with automation for some low-level and a few high-level processes, but they still want security teams involved. On average, respondents report that 30% of their security workflows are automated today; but nearly two-thirds of respondents expect they will automate more security workflows in the coming year.

Like this:

The 2014 Debit Issuer Study, commissioned by PULSE, found sustained growth in both consumer and business debit in 2013. Financial institutions weathered the Target data breach and are looking for solutions to enhance security, with many issuers now planning to implement EMV debit, the study shows. Debit program performance continues to improve, as active cardholders increase their usage of debit.

Key findings include:

Consumers continue to shift to electronic payments, with transactions per active card increasing to 20.1 per month from 19.4 a year earlier.

84% of financial institutions reissued all exposed cards in response to Target, compared to only 29% that typically reissue all exposed cards as a standard response to breaches.

86% of financial institutions stated that they plan to begin issuing EMV cards in the next two years, a significant increase from 50% in 2012.

In the wake of several high-profile data breaches, the industry has come together to look for solutions to increase security and advance EMV implementation,” said Steve Sievert, executive vice president of marketing and communications for PULSE. “While PIN debit remains the most secure payment method in the market, this year’s study confirms the industry is reaching a tipping point toward EMV. The majority of financial institutions plan to issue EMV debit cards starting in 2015

Target breach was watershed event

The Target breach impacted every financial institution that participated in the study, causing fraud loss rates to increase in 2013 and compelling issuers to re-evaluate their strategies for improving card security in 2014, the study found.

Overall, 14% of all debit cards were exposed in data breaches in 2013, compared to 5% in 2012. The resulting 2013 fraud losses to financial institutions amounted to 5.7 basis points for signature debit and 0.7 basis points for PIN debit. Compared with the prior year, PIN debit fraud loss rates remained constant at 0.3 cents per transaction, on average, while signature debit loss rates increased to 2.2 cents per transaction, up from 2.0 cents.

Data breaches heightened attention to issues of debit card security. Prior to the Target incident, many financial institutions were hesitant to commit to EMV because of uncertainty around retailer adoption of chip card point-of-sale terminals, questions about the viability of the business case for migrating from magnetic stripe cards to chip cards, as well as unresolved issues related to regulation and support for merchant routing choice. In many ways, the Target breach served as a catalyst for the resolution of these issues.

The most common strategy among financial institutions is to provide account holders with an EMV debit card as part of their regular card reissuance cycle. Migration to EMV debit cards will begin in earnest in early 2015 and will span approximately three years, with many issuers attempting to provide chip cards to their international travellers and heavy debit users in advance of the liability shift in October 2015.

We were quite surprised by the across-the-board embrace of EMV by debit issuers,” said Tony Hayes, a partner at Oliver Wyman who co-led the study. “There has been a dramatic shift from issuers’ tepid interest last year to their active plans to implement EMV beginning in 2015

Debit continues to grow, as issuers focus on growth strategies

Outside of the challenges caused by data breaches, debit continued its growth trajectory in 2013. On the consumer side, the primary performance improvement was in transactions per active card per month, which rose to 20.1 in 2013 from 19.4 in 2012. Other metrics, such as penetration, active rate and ticket size, remained consistent year-over-year. There was an uptick in usage of business debit cards: transactions per active card per month grew to 14.5 from 13.5.

Continuing historical trends, signature debit declined in share of total transactions between 2012 and 2013, falling to 62% from 64% for consumer cards, and to 70% from 72% for business cards. As regulated issuers (those with more than $10 billion in global assets) receive equivalent interchange for signature and PIN transactions but incur lower costs on PIN transactions, large debit issuers now tend to prefer PIN transactions.

As issuers continue to promote the migration of cash payments to cards, PULSE expects overall ATM use to naturally decline. In 2013, ATM withdrawals reached a study-wide low of 2.3 per active card per month. Large banks expect ATM transactions to continue to decline, but community banks and credit unions project increased ATM transaction volume as they seek to drive traffic from the branch to the ATM.

Like this:

I thought I had published this months ago but found it still in my drafts.

2013 was a very busy year for the UK’s Information Commissioners Office (ICO) as he issued record numbers of fines and enforcements.

There are normally three types of punishments administered by the ICO:-

Monetary. The most serious of the actions and one normally reserved for organisational entities.

Undertaking. Typically applied when an organisation has failed to adhere to good business practise and needs the helping guidance of the ICO

Prosecutions. Normally reserved for individuals who have blatantly breached the Act and like 2012 there were not many in 2013.

The complete list of those who fell foul of the Data Protection Act in 2013 is below:-

Monetary penalty notices

A monetary penalty will only be served in the most serious situations. When deciding the size of a monetary penalty, the ICO takes into account the seriousness of the breach and other factors like the size, financial and other resources of an organisation’s data controller. The ICO can impose a penalty of up to £500,000. It is worth noting that monetary penalties are to HM Treasury. The size of the fines might change with the pending revision to the Data Protection Act.

The list has the most recent first.

16 December 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served on First Financial (UK) Limited after the pay day Loans Company sent millions of spam text messages.

29 October 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served on North East Lincolnshire Council after the loss of an unencrypted memory device containing personal data and sensitive personal data relating to 286 children.

22 October 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served on the Ministry of Justice for failing to keep personal data securely, after spreadsheets showing prisoners’ details were emailed to members of the public in error.

26 September 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served on Jala Transport, a small money-lending business, after the theft of an unencrypted portable hard drive containing its customer database.

29 August 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served on Aberdeen City Council after inadequate home working arrangements led to 39 pages of personal data being uploaded onto the internet by a Council employee.

23 August 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served to Islington Borough Council after personal details of over 2,000 residents were released online via the What Do They Know (WDTK) website.

5 August 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served to the Bank of Scotland after customers’ account details were repeatedly faxed to the wrong recipients. The information included payslips, bank statements, account details and mortgage applications, along with customers’ names, addresses and contact details.

12 July 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served on NHS Surrey following the discovery of sensitive personal data belonging to thousands of patients on hard drives sold on an online auction site. Whilst NHS Surrey has now been dissolved outstanding issues are now being dealt with by the Department of Health.

8 July 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served to Tameside Energy Services Ltd after the Manchester based company blighted the public with unwanted marketing calls.

18 June 2013. Monetary penalty notices have been served to Nationwide Energy Services and We Claim You Gain – both companies are part of Save Britain Money Ltd based in Swansea. The penalties were issued after the companies were found to be responsible for over 2,700 complaints to the Telephone Preference Service or reports to the ICO using its online survey, between 26 May 2011 and end of December 2012.

13 June 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served to North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust, after several faxes containing sensitive personal data were sent to a member of the public in error.

7 June 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served to Glasgow City Council, following the loss of two unencrypted laptops, one of which contained the personal information of 20,143 people.

5 June 2013. A monetary penalty notice has been served to Halton Borough Council, in respect of an incident in which the home address of adoptive parents was wrongly disclosed to the birth family.

3 June 2013. A monetary penalty has been served to Stockport Primary Care Trust following the discovery of a large number of patient records at a site formerly owned by the Trust.

20 March 2013. A monetary penalty has been served to DM Design Bedroom Ltd. The company has been the subject of nearly 2,000 complaints to the ICO and the Telephone Preference Service. The company consistently failed to check whether individuals had opted out of receiving marketing calls and responded to just a handful of the complaints received.

15 February 2013. A monetary penalty has been served to the Nursing and Midwifery Council. The council lost three DVDs related to a nurse’s misconduct hearing, which contained confidential personal information and evidence from two vulnerable children. An ICO investigation found the information was not encrypted.

24 January 2013. A monetary penalty has been served to the entertainment company Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited following a serious breach of the Data Protection Act. The penalty comes after the Sony PlayStation Network Platform was hacked in April 2011, compromising the personal information of millions of customers, including their names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth and account passwords. Customers’ payment card details were also at risk. Appeal withdrawn.

Undertakings

Undertakings are formal agreements between an organisation and the ICO to undertake certain actions to avoid future breaches of the Data Protection Act, typically this involves, Encryption, Training and Management Procedures.

The list has the most recent first.

20 December 2013. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Luton Borough Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed September 2013.

26 November 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead, following an incident in which restricted information about employees was disclosed on its intranet in error.

22 November 2013. An undertaking to comply with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations has been signed by Better Together. The organisation must neither transmit, nor instigate the transmission of, unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing by means of electronic mail to individual subscribers unless the recipient of the electronic mail has previously notified Better Together that they consent. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Foyle Women’s Aid has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed August 2013.

21 November 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust. This follows four incidents involving the accidental disclosure of sensitive personal data.

1 November 2013. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that The Health and Care Professions Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed July 2013.

1 November 2013. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Mansfield District Borough Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed January 2013.

25 October 2013. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that The Burnett Practice has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed in April 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Panasonic UK. This follows the theft of an unencrypted laptop containing personal data relating to people who had attended a hospitality event run by a third party company on Panasonic’s behalf.

15 October 2013. An Undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Royal Veterinary College. This follows the loss of a memory card containing personal data. In addition, data protection training is not considered to be adequate and the RVC does not appear to be taking steps to address this proactively. This highlights a potentially serious failing in respect of staff awareness of Information Governance policies. Their investigation revealed that the device was personally owned by the employee and as such fell outside of the policies and procedures in place. However, the RVC does not appear to have accounted for the possibility of employees using their own devices in the workplace.

7 October 2013. An Undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

4 October 2013. An Undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Cardiff & Vale University Health Board, following the loss of documents containing sensitive personal data by a consultant.

29 August 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Aberdeen City Council after inadequate home working arrangements led to 39 pages of personal data being uploaded onto the internet by a Council employee.

11 September 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Luton Borough Council following several incidents involving inappropriate handling of sensitive personal data. Investigation of these incidents revealed that previous recommendations made by the ICO had not been implemented.

28 August 2013. An undertaking to comply with the sixth data protection principle has been signed by Cardiff City Council. The Council agreed to put measures in place to ensure greater compliance with subject access requests.

22 August 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Local Government Ombudsman. This follows the theft of a bag containing hard copy papers relating to complaints made to the Local Government Ombudsman (the LGO) including some SPD. It is felt that the provision of data protection training was insufficient to ensure staff awareness of policies and procedures relating to the use of personal data.

13 August 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Northern Health & Social Care Trust. This follows a number of security incidents which led to a formal investigation into the Trust’s compliance with the Act. One incident in May 2011, involved confidential service user information being faxed from a ward in Antrim Hospital to a local business in error. The investigation into the Trust revealed that despite the Trust having introduced what should have been mandatory Information Governance training for all staff, the majority of staff involved in these incidents had not received this training. This highlighted a potentially serious failing in respect of staff awareness of Information Governance policies. In particular, the failure to monitor and enforce staff completion of training was a concern.

13 August 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Foyle Women’s Aid. This follows the temporary loss of a folder belonging to a Criminal Justice Support worker employed by Foyle Women’s Aid that was left in a café. The folder contained confidential client information. An apparent lack of effective controls and procedures for taking information out of the office was a contributor to the loss of highly sensitive personal data.

16 July 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Janet Thomas. This follows a report made by a member of the public that approximately 7,435 CV files, containing personal data, were being stored unprotected on the website http://www.janetpage.com.

9 July 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Health & Care Professions Council (HCPC) after an incident in which papers containing personal data were stolen on a train in 2011.

12 June 2013. (issued 10 September 2012) An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Bedford Borough Council relating to the removal of legacy data from a social care database.

12 June 2013 (issued 18 September 2012). An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by Central Bedfordshire Council relating to the removal of legacy data from a social care database and in relation to the preparation of planning application documentation for publication.

31 May 2013. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Leeds City Council has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed November 2012.

Prospect. A follow up has been completed to provide an assurance that Prospect has appropriately addressed the actions agreed in its undertaking signed January 2013.

21 May 2013 (issued 9 November 2011). An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by News Group Newspapers, following an attack on the website of The Sun newspaper in 2011.

26 April 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by The Burnett Practice. This follows an investigation whereby an email account used by the practice had been subject to a third party attack. The email account subject to the attack was used to provide test results to patients and included a list of names and email addresses.

4 April 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, following incidents last year in which personal data was inappropriately disclosed.

25 January 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the Managing Director of Mansfield District Council. This follows a number of incidents where personal data of housing benefit claimants was disclosed to the wrong landlord.

16 January 2013. An undertaking to comply with the seventh data protection principle has been signed by the union Prospect. This follows an incident in which two files containing personal details of approximately 19,000 members of the union had been sent to an unknown third party email address in error.

Prosecutions

The list has the most recent first.

3 December 2013. A former manager who oversaw the finances of a GP’s practice in Maidstone has been prosecuted by the ICO after unlawfully accessing the medical records of approximately 1,940 patients registered with the surgery. Steven Tennison was prosecuted under section 55 of the Data Protection Act at Maidstone Magistrates Court.

8 October 2013. A pay day loans company based in London and its director have been prosecuted after failing to register that the business was processing personal information. Hamed Shabani, the sole director of First Financial, was convicted under section 61 of the Data Protection Act at City of London Magistrates Court.

25 September 2013. A former Barclays Bank employee has been fined after illegally accessing the details of a customer’s account. In one case the employee, Jennifer Addo, found out the number of children the customer had and passed the details to the customer’s then partner, who was a friend of Ms Addo.

15 August 2013. A probation officer who revealed a domestic abuse victim’s new address to the alleged perpetrator has been fined £150 following a prosecution bought by the ICO.